Arachne’s Saturday afternoon exorcism
Date: 2025-06-28 13:14
(Arachne’s Saturday afternoon exorcism)
[Sat Jun 28 2025]
Colonial Memorial Cemetery/span>/spannoon, about 72F(22C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. The mist is heaviest At Hawthorn and Lake/span>/spanThe afternoon air hangs heavy with the promise of rain as Arachne and August make their way along the winding gravel path through Colonial Memorial Cemetery. Dark clouds gather overhead, casting the weathered headstones in muted gray light. The scent of damp earth and blooming lilacs drifts on the humid breeze.
Near the center of the cemetery, an ornate wrought iron bench sits beneath a sprawling oak tree. Something glints against the dark metal of the bench’s armrest – a delicate silver chain catches what little sunlight filters through the storm clouds. The chain appears to be attached to a locket, roughly the size of a silver dollar, that rests on the bench’s seat as if someone had simply set it down and walked away.
The cemetery grounds are otherwise empty, save for a few crows perched on nearby headstones. They watch the approaching pair with unusual intensity, occasionally cawing in what sounds almost like warning. The locket’s silver surface seems to pulse faintly in the dim light, and even from several feet away, there’s something about it that draws the eye – beautiful, yet somehow unsettling.
A groundskeeper’s rake lies abandoned near a partially filled wheelbarrow about twenty yards away, as if its owner had left in the middle of their work.
“At least, you’re lucky.” August tells Arachne in his hubris while they come to stand at the center of the cemetary. A cursory glance is given around in that kept contempt of how he keeps ending up in places like this. “I know my way around a cemetery.” Too well, perhaps. Still, his eyes are drawn to the crows – stare them back as they stare at him before he looks down and over at the locket glinting on the bench. “I’m sensing the curse, whatever it is. The source might be close. If we can find that connection, and if it is a grave, all we need to do is salt and burn it. I don’t go outside without gasoline or a pack of salt.”
With the overcast skies setting an appropriately dismal mood for the location, Arachne trails along the paths until that subtle glint of silver in the periphery of her vision manages to catch her gaze. An elbow bends, ribbing August just enough to point it out before she’s breaking from his side to approach the lone bench beneath the sprawling oak tree. A dagger is flicked loose from its hidden sheath in her sleeve, the wicked sharp tip carving rows of sigils along the back slat along the bench with slow, methodical turns of her wrist, anchoring a warding to protect from nefarious energies saturating the grounds. Her gaze ticks back to August, eyeing him incredulously at the mention of salt and gasoline. The sovereign shakes her heard firmly as though to deter the thought from his mind, as fruitless as it may be.
“…sorrow shared… vessel filled… never empty…” The abandoned rake near the wheelbarrow clatters against the ground despite the absence of wind.
As Arachne completes her warding sigils, the locket suddenly grows warm enough that heat shimmer rises from its silver surface. The chain shifts slightly on the bench, as if drawn toward her despite the protective magic she’s just carved. Through the growing warmth, both can now see that the locket’s surface bears an intricate engraving – thorny vines twisted into the shape of a heart, with what appear to be tiny red stones set along the thorns like drops of blood.
The groundskeeper’s wheelbarrow tips over with a hollow crash, spilling damp soil across the grass. In the scattered earth, something pale catches the light – fragments of old bone, far too old and yellowed to be from any recent burial. The crows take flight all at once, their harsh cries echoing across the cemetery as they circle overhead in a tight, agitated spiral.
While Arachne fades, with an elbow at his side that returns an unresponsive stare from August in lieu of the ballistic plate she jabbed, he still watches the crows. One hand remains in his pocket in that nonchalance, leaving the locket that drew Arachne in, to instead stare up at the circling murder of avians. “Did you hear that?” It’s unclear whether he asks the muted woman, the birds, or himself, but he does begin to wander. That sensitivity inherent to him, it’s anybody’s guess if he sees, hears, or feels more than he should beyond the veil of the living, trudging on towards the bones with a slowly narrowing gaze.
A silent sigh spills from Arachne’s lips when the locket suddenly begins to warm enough to cast a shimmering heat around it. The already fate-cursed monarch can only palm at the side of her face, her other hand stretching out to curl her fingers in beckoning to the locket drawn to her, accepting it into her protection while her head turns with an arched brow at August. Her gaze scans over the grounds at length, stopping upon the wheelbarrow that suddenly upended itself, dumping damp soil that hid bone fragments too old to be fresh. Her mouth twists, expression becoming one of contemplation before she palms out her iPhone, tapping a quick text to August to ask: Did the groundskeeper unearth something they weren’t meant to disturb?
The moment Arachne’s fingers close around the locket, a wave of profound sadness washes over her – not her own grief, but something ancient and layered, like the accumulated tears of decades. The silver feels unnaturally warm against her palm, pulsing with a rhythm that matches her heartbeat.
August’s phone buzzes with her text just as he crouches near the scattered bones. Up close, he can see they’re not random fragments – they appear to be pieces of a child’s ribcage, stained dark with age. The soil around them is disturbed in a perfect circle, as if something had been deliberately unearthed and then hastily reburied.
“Edmund… where is Edmund…” The whispered voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, carried on the humid air. The temperature drops noticeably, and frost begins to form on the nearby headstones despite the warm afternoon.
Behind Arachne, the oak tree’s leaves rustle violently though no wind stirs the rest of the cemetery. In the shifting shadows cast by its branches, translucent figures begin to materialize – women in mourning dress from different eras, all clutching similar lockets to their chests, their faces etched with inconsolable loss.
August’s breath hitches, and the slow release of it is misting before his face in spite of the early, warm summer afternoon. The cold doesn’t affect him so to speak, but whatever whispered voices there are, they do. Those harsher eyes, they’re a modicum softer in inspect, and they are trained. Well trained for this sort of work, easily and beyond able to recognize that they belong to a ribcage, and that they belong to a child. His expression, oft crossed with demeaning vigor, it fades to a look of profound sadness.
Down to the hue of his eyes, the greens lost, bereft of their usual Pierce stare that likens him so much to his uncle. And while crouched, he extends his fingers, brushes them over the pieces, nudges them slowly into a uniform order that leaves them connected. “Are you looking for Edmund?” He’s asking the bones, now, that much is clear. Crows have failed to capture his attention for far too long. The broken parts of him, touched by something since birth, they resonate with the dead and parted ghosts of old. Perhaps enough to see, enough to hear or even touch. Instead of replying to Arachne, all he says is; “Check the inside of the locket.”
As August’s fingers brush the bone fragments, arranging them with gentle reverence, the child’s ribs seem to exhale a sigh that mingles with the misting air. The whispered voice grows clearer, more focused. “Papa promised… Papa promised he would come back…”
The moment Arachne opens the locket, two things happen simultaneously. The left side reveals a daguerreotype of a stern-faced woman in 1850s mourning dress, her dark eyes seeming to follow Arachne’s movements. The right side contains a pressed white lily, brown with age but impossibly intact, as if preserved by unnatural means.
The translucent mourning figures around the oak tree turn their attention to August, their ghostly forms drifting closer to where he kneels with the child’s remains. One figure, clearer than the rest, approaches – a woman whose face matches the photograph in the locket. She reaches toward the bones with ethereal hands.
“My children… my poor children… they wait for Edmund still.” Constance Whitmore’s voice carries the weight of decades of grief. “But he never came. He never came to say goodbye.”
The locket in Arachne’s hands grows almost burning hot, and the pressed lily begins to crumble at the edges, releasing the faint scent of funeral flowers into the increasingly frigid air.
As August’s fingers touch the bone fragments, arranging them with gentle reverence, the child’s ribs seem to warm beneath his touch. A small, translucent figure begins to materialize beside him – a girl no more than seven years old in a tattered white dress, her face gaunt with fever marks still visible on her pale cheeks.
“Papa promised he would come back,” the child spirit whispers, her voice like autumn leaves. “Mama keeps his picture close, but Papa never came home. The bad man took him away.”
Meanwhile, Arachne opens the locket with trembling fingers. Inside, the left compartment holds a daguerreotype of a stern-faced woman in 1850s mourning dress – but her eyes seem to follow Arachne’s movements. The right side contains a pressed white lily, brown with age yet refusing to crumble. As she stares at it, the flower seems to pulse with the same rhythm as her heartbeat.
The mourning women in the shadows grow more solid, their weeping now audible as a low, keening wail. One steps forward – the same woman from the photograph, her face twisted with rage and grief. “He left us,” she hisses, her voice layering with the others. “Left us to die while he played with his whore. But I made sure… I made sure he would know our pain.”
Arachne leaves August to the matter of the discovering the nature of the bones and their meaning. Silver eyes shadow with an profound melancholy not of her own as she finds herself suddenly holding court to numerous women inflicted with inconsolable sorrows. Emotions are wound, twisted, and buried deep, thumb delicately teasing open the locket to reveal its interior, skimming over the revealed daguerreotype of a stern-faced woman, then the pressed-white lily that pulsates with the slow, steady rhythm of her heart.
And as the women begin to wail, laying bare their wrath as lovers scorned, jilted, and heart-broken, she can only sigh, holding up a hand, drawing out a parchment and a pen to jot out: Is Edmund the father of your children? A lover shared among you? – she points this to Constance Withmore, with a distracted glance back at August, ensuring him fine while she accepts her role to console and solve the problems of hurt women.
“You have, haven’t you?” August’s voice is low, distracted. All effort and attention spent on the bones that he moves in his stillness. There’s the sight of that girl, small and whispering, and the woman too, but he spares them only that furtive glance before rising slowly. “Why, then,” His smile is wan and gone, edged with their own grief and pain and anger as if he feels all of them at once himself filtered through that great expanse of the veil that they touch him through while he converses with the dead. “Why do you let your sons and daughters, suffer, when all the reason of your pain is gone?”
“He promised to return…” “Left us with nothing…” “Made us vessels for sorrow…” Their collective anguish feeds into the locket, which now burns so hot in Arachne’s hands that the metal begins to leave red marks on her palm.
Suddenly, the pressed lily in the locket crumbles completely to dust, and from that dust rises a new figure – a tall, gaunt man in a Victorian suit, his face twisted in perpetual agony. This is Edmund Whitmore, trapped within the locket’s curse, forced to experience every moment of grief it has ever contained.
“Please…” Edmund’s voice is barely a whisper. “I’ve felt it all… every tear, every sleepless night… I understand now. Let me rest.”
The temperature plummets further, and the very air seems to thicken with accumulated sorrow.
Arachne’s fingers tighten around the burning locket, blistered but unflinching, her silence more powerful than any sermon. She looks to Edmund not in pity, but with terrible understanding, and then to August who speaks with the dead like one of them, carrying grief not of his own as if it were born in his marrow. Her fingers flick, casting word to parchment, illustrating her thoughts: Because pain doesn’t vanish when the source is gone. Grief grows roots, deeper than memory, longer than legacy. Pain has a way of corrupting a woman’s soul, and birthing terrible things from that rot. She flicks her paper up, unsure that he’ll read it, but Edmund will certainly know. She closes her palm over the scorched metal like a benediction, bearing the agony as a witness to centuries long pain that has trapped Edmund and his lovers. And, with a breath, she begins to weave an illusion before the women, where they find levity and grace, and satisfaction that Edmund did return home, to their children, and love, while never the same as the first, endured.
It’s a terrible thing, to lie to the restless than to properly resolve their needs, but sometimes a lie is enough to simply bring an end to pain by birthing a reality a broken heart desperately wants to believe.
As Arachne’s illusion takes shape, the mourning women pause in their keening. The air shimmers with her weaving, and suddenly they see what their hearts have longed for – Edmund returning home, gathering his children in his arms, whispering apologies and promises of love. The ghostly figures of the children materialize more clearly, running to embrace their father’s spirit.
But Constance Whitmore’s form grows more solid, more furious. “No,” she hisses, her voice cutting through the illusion like a blade. “Pretty lies will not undo what was done. He chose another over us. He left us to die in poverty while he lived in comfort with his mistress.”
The locket in Arachne’s hand pulses violently, fighting against the illusion. The accumulated grief of decades pushes back, threatening to shatter the carefully woven fantasy. Edmund’s spirit wavers between relief and renewed anguish as Constance’s rage feeds the curse’s power.
“The locket was made to hold sorrow,” Constance continues, her form now towering and terrible. “It will not be satisfied with sweet dreams. It hungers for truth – for justice.”
The temperature drops so low that frost spreads across the ground in spiraling patterns, and the very air begins to crystallize around them. The curse is reaching its breaking point.
A glance, that’s all it takes towards Arachne from over the shoulder of the woman that he stares at. At the agony wrecked apparition – at the parchment she holds, but past the illusion she weaves. His jaw grows tighter as if he’s rooted into reality with that again, stirring awake from that dream the dead want him to dream, the feeling that they want him to imagine. Frost ladens the edges of his mouth in another breath spent misted. But, he’s moving. He takes the child at his side by her wrist, pulls her like he might his own sister; gentle, towards the towering, raging ghost among others. His other hand seeks hers, to touch and to hold the ephemeral, plea with that edge of haunted look that feels their pain as easily as they do, yet not consumed by it as they have. “Wait,” He calls, “Please.” And in the midst of them, beneath Arachne’s breaking illusion, August brings the child’s hand towards the mother, weaves them to one another. “You are right in your desire for revenge and justice, and you should have it. This man should rot, die ten thousand times and more for doing this to you – but please.” His gaze, sharper, has that look of a fierce orphan nonetheless, because if rumors are true- August never had a father himself. What he says is trauma made manifest, a request he couldn’t make himself, spoken for another. “Make your child stronger through this, don’t let your anger break her in death, too.. This is your second life, not the end of it.”
The moment August brings the child’s ghostly hand to touch Constance’s, something shifts in the terrible woman’s expression. The rage doesn’t leave her face, but it wavers, cracking like ice under spring sun. The little girl looks up at her mother with fever-bright eyes that hold no accusation, only love.
“Mama,” the child whispers, “I’m not hurt anymore. Papa’s sorry doesn’t matter now. But you’re still hurting, and it’s making the pretty lady’s hands burn.”
Constance’s towering form begins to shrink back to human proportions. Her eyes, wild with decades of fury, focus on her daughter’s face. “My sweet Mary… I thought… I thought if he suffered as we did…”
“But we’re not suffering,” another child’s voice joins in – a boy, materializing beside his sister. “We’ve been waiting for you to stop being angry so we could go.”
The locket in Arachne’s blistered hands suddenly cools. The frost on the ground begins to melt, and the oppressive weight of accumulated sorrow starts to lift like morning mist. Edmund’s spirit, no longer writhing in agony, looks toward Constance with genuine remorse.
“I was a coward,” he says simply. “I should have faced what I’d done. But trapping me here… it trapped you too.”
Constance looks between her children, August’s earnest face, and finally at Arachne, who still bears the physical cost of containing the curse. Slowly, deliberately, she reaches toward the locket.
“Let it end,” she whispers.